Roger Ehrenberg, writing for SeekingAlpha, challenges conventional thinking about Apple’s prospects in the enterprise and assesses the Mac’s threat to PC-based platforms over time as being “increasingly acute.”
“I know from my own experience in my company how this transformation takes place,” Ehrenberg writes.
“We started out being a Dell/Intel/Windows XP Professional-based shop. Then our developers needed better machines, several of whom had Macs at home, and requested hi-test Mac machines for development. They loved them. Told everyone. Then anybody doing graphics/visualization wanted a Mac. Then anybody in a client-facing role who did presentations, online demos, etc. wanted one. Now pretty much everybody has one. It has become ‘the’ supported platform in my company. And it happened in a stealthy, inside-out way, where a core of passionate Mac users got the ball rolling, showed others how awesome it was after which people were beating a path to my desk asking for one,” Ehrenberg writes.
“So change can happen quickly within SMEs. Yeah, we’re not talking about Deutsche Bank going Mac tomorrow, but as the PC user experience degrades and/or requires new hardware, and as more and more grass-roots Mac users begin speaking up, some change – material change – will invariably take place,” Ehrenberg writes.
MacDailyNews Take: We might not be talking about Deutsche Bank, but we could just as well be talking Japan’s Aozora Bank, which last year dumped 2,300 Windows PCs for Apple Macs. (See also: Boom! Largest automobile processing company in North America dumps Windows PCs for Apple Macs – July 16, 2007 and Wilkes University to dump all Windows PCs, replace with Apple Macs – February 22, 2007)
Ehrenberg continues, “I saw this movie with the Blackberry phone. Early adopters were supported by IT in a one-off, kluge way, told others how awesome the device was, a wall of demand was created, and finally the Wall Street firms caved and properly supported the device on an enterprise-wide basis. The same thing can happen with the Mac. And don’t tell me that change can’t happen and that Apple is out of the enterprise game. Because it can. And because it’s not. Really.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Patrice” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Note: The recipe produces the same delicious results for iPhone, too.
“And so it begins.”
I saw a post concerning this very issue last month. Here’s the link:
Apple and the Enterprise
If the link doesn’t work: http://itjobsrus.blogspot.com/2007/08/apple-and-enterprise.html
Anyway, looks like this guy who wrote this nailed it on the head. It will be the average Joe, the worker bee, who gets Mac into the door and on the desktop.
Viva la revolucion!
Exactly right. Just keep building more Apple stores, keep the Mac/iPod/iPhone hip with the university crowd and keep buying/creating more “gotta-have” software like Final Cut.
When will they start selling iPhones at Target, Best Buy, etc.? (Hey, they even sell iPods at Walmart don’t they?)
Seeing Deutsche Bank in the article made my heart drop — considering that I work for them!
I guess I’ll have to see what I can do to get the ball rolling at DB…
I switched to Macs way back in 1996. I’m a trainer and consultant in project planning, delivering up to 40 to 50 presentations a year to businesses all over the world. When people saw my PowerBook and found out it was a Mac there was mostly mild curiosity ( who is this oddball?) mixed with a lot of skepticism.
And then along came OS X and the new generation PowerBooks with the aluminum case form factor. I noticed a subtle but definite shift in attitudes. Gone was the derision, the jokes, the skepticism. The level of outright interest and curiosity shifted dramatically.
And then I got my MacBook Pro! The capability to easily switch from OS X to Windows XP makes jaws drop. The curiosity has changed dramatically over the last year or so to out and out envy!
God it feels good to be vindicated after all these years.
Begun, the Phone War has…
The rotten stench of Vista is helping. MS should continue over-promising and under-delivering.
“Apple Mac can take over businesses from the inside out”
It’s time for another remake of The Thing.
I’m as happy as a pig in zune droppings.
No squirt for you
I went into a river outfitters store on the Buffulo River in a pretty remote part Arkansas over the weekend. The first thing I noticed was a 24″ iMac on his counter that he was using for his cabin rental resevations. He even had DSL.
I sent this article to the IT guys where I work. I could hear them laughing and they’re two floors above me! What a joke. MACs in the enterprise. The day that happens is the day cops get off O.J. Simpson’s back. Leave O.J. alone—he’s innocent! Again!
Look, if you want to see the funny movie of a monkey peeing on himself that your buddy e-mailed you—you need Windows and the ability to play the glorious WMV format. If you need to make a “Your mother doesn’t work here. Clean up after yourselves” sign for the break room you need Microsoft Word. PowerPoint will do in a pinch. You still have to use the beautiful Arial typeface in either case. None of the above important business tasks can be accomplished on a MAC. I don’t think anything can be done on a MAC, nor does anyone else. Losers.
Your potential. Our passion.™
ZT, that was brilliant … up to the sentence starting with “I don’t think anything …” … That, and the word following, was not funny.
The first sentence was hugely amusing! A couple of years ago I worked in an IT department at a large contractor shop. My supervisor was an agnostic, but his manager and the supervisor of the senior sys admins were both pro-Apple and even used Mc laptops at work. Their own, brought in from home. The IT department “wouldn’t support them” and wouldn’t let non-managers even try. “I need a Unix terminal!” “So we’ll get you a Sun box.” OK, it wasn’t a BAD Sun box … but … SERIOUSLY!
The company’s web site and external email system also ran on IE, and only on IE (for Windows). Then there was all the regular carping about “server’s been hacked … again”. DUH!
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page Pod-Cast
Surely some CEO’s have brains and can figure out that cost is not just about, ‘In the door expense,” but the total throughput of their enterprise.
Sitting in Halifax airport eating a sandwich from Tim Horton’s. Three computer users sitting there working away on their laptops – all three of them were aluminum cases with illuminated Apple logos.
In coffee shops everywhere, business travellers are using Apple ever more frequently. Yes Apple laptops are more readily identified and noticed in comparison to Sony Vaio, HP, Dell and other such Windows thingies.. but the proportion is ever increasing in real terms.
The magic word is “ever”
Hey Zune Tang…
Just would like to point out that you are indeed correct.. you can’t do any of those things on a MAC. You can make a network connection using a MAC address.
Unless of course you are just a total idiot and meant a “Mac”. Try to get with the program and learn to use the language we have all agreed upon. Using all capitals would constitute a spelling mistake.
This article led me to one by the Motley Fool writer. He panned Apple’s iPhone vs Nokia cause, of course Nokia is bigger and bigger always means better cause, well, cause it makes it so a writer does not have to think.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
This article makes the point that THINGS HAPPEN, even if you do not think that they should.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> I think that is Jobs whole point. He looks at where he things the puck will be and skates there so he can redirect it. Cell phones have been out there for a long time. Phones are phones. Its the network that carries or drops calls. Mostly the phone just connects to the network. PERIOD.
So, where is the puck going (what do people really want – not what do you want to sell them)? Ease of use, great looks, cool factor. It makes a phone sell.
Anyone can have a phone.
They give them away.
Want a cool phone? Skate to where the puck will be (or in this case make the cool phone. ) What is scary is that even now, the cell phone makers still do not have a clue as to where the puck is. They just copy what the last guy did (as best as they can figure) and go there.
So, where am I going (where is the puck going next?)? I am not sure, but then again, I am not Jobs.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” /> Darn. 🙁
But I think its all coming to gether soon. Apple tv, iPod, iPhone, everything online, everything connected. Everything just working. Hmmm, sounds like a game plan. Now all the other guys have to do is get 6-8 different companies from different industries together and agree on where the puck will be and . . .. er . . . . never mind. Heck they could not even guess where the puck was. Nevermind where it will be, and work together.
Apple, it just works . . . . . at almost anything you want to do.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
You heard it here.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
en
You said, “In coffee shops everywhere, business travellers are using Apple ever more frequently. Yes Apple laptops are more readily identified and noticed in comparison to Sony Vaio, HP, Dell and other such Windows thingies.. but the proportion is ever increasing in real terms.”
BINGO. True. Since Apples are easily identifyable vs all the other looks (and every company keeps changing their look trying to find the gotcha look) you never know which laptop you are looking at, unless its an apple. Go, Steve, Go.
en
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”grin” style=”border:0;” />
MDN = came, “He came. He saw where the puck was going. He conquered.”
That’s ok, for every WinFool who switches to a Mac there’s about a dozen Intel Mac’s getting stripped of Mac OS X in favor of Windows.
You go to a Apple store and they try to sell Mac’s like PC’s. The only catch is that the customer is told they have to go home to install their present copy of Windows.
So Apple is turning into a PC vendor.
You’d be surprised how many people install XP, not Vista, and never use it again after the first couple of weeks of Mac ownership.
Sooner or later you’ll try Mac OS X yourself and see what you’ve been missing.
Great article, but then Roger Ehrenberg is one of the brightest business guys on the net. I check his website regularly:
http://www.informationarbitrage.com/
He does not specialize on computer issues and has no ax to grind here.
Smart and honest is a wonderful combination.
Plain and simple isn’t it.
There is a preference once one uses a Mac.
And after 25 years, I have never looked Back.
I works… and works well.
Shake – Rattle – and Roll Apple!!!!
Personally I think everyone should have to use both daily. Don’t you ever learn a lot from that…
The mention of Deutsche Bank is interesting. I’m the former CIO of a subsidiary of DB since “retired” once the Bank decided that subsidiaries aren’t supposed to have CIOs. When we acquired by DB, I had the only Mac in the company. After all, someone had to have a computer that could open corrupted MS Word files and test internet-based apps for universal access after they had been butchered by .NET.
There were several closet Mac fans in the Bank. One woman in NYC was trying to compile a list of arguments to support including Apple among approved vendors. People interested in video conferencing at the desktop were in favor of iChat rather than the horrendously expensive solution that the Bank rammed thru based largely on the fact that it had an investment in the company and was promoted by the boss who underwrote the outside company’s financing. Can you say “conflict of interest”?
Anyway, there are probably still a few people interested in making Apple an acceptable solution within certain segments of the Bank. They need to be identified, encouraged, and supported.
Keep in mind also that there are many large shops that run IBM Lotus Notes for email/messaging/applications, and IBM provides an up-to-date native Mac OS X client for Lotus Notes. This option certainly will make it easier for those who wish to make the switch.